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“He is flawed. He was all over the place. We never saw him at his best when he had a really good driver alongside him. We never saw him in a Ferrari with a driver of similar talent really, so I think that (his number of titles) is misleading.”

95 comments on Mark Webber kept quiet about shoulder injury

So many F1 games, I always liked the ‘GrandPrix’ series, especially part 2 and 4 .. good memories :-)

Doesn’t sound like the Mercedes was a very safe car to drive, but I’m sure they learned a lot for next year.

Rubens looks happy .. kinda like he is lookin forward to a new toy :-P

I’d like to go to all races, too. Have been to Monza and Monaco and really enjoyed them. Also liked Spa a lot, but I’m probably biased because I like the track so much (the conditions there were usually pretty aweful when I went there :-P)

but if his shoulder was broken, then there was nothing to do. It’s still incredible he managed to qualy just 0.07 secs behind Vettel in Seb’s favourite track and one of the most demanding of the calendar.

And then again, he finished 2nd, setting the fastest lap at the last lap… with a broken shoulder and a full race AND qualy in the same day.

oh how I wish I could go to every race, for that matter, how I wish I could go to one! Been watching F1 since I was 6 (1997) yet as neither my mum nor dad were fans I couldn’t go to a race. Now I’m old enough to go myself, I’m a student and can’t afford to go karting more than 3 times a year never mind go to a race. I’m hoping to go to Montreal in the next few years but god knows how I’ll get the money!

I don’t think you can direct all those comments solely at Schumacher, as this more highlights the issue with the sport as a whole. I’m not a fan of the guy but you can’t blame him for being in the superior car for 5 years straight. He made the most of it, and reaped the rewards. It comes back to the point that is continually made that we now have pilots, not drivers. Their natural ability does not have enough of an influence on the result – he with the best car wins.

My point is, you can’t just take this approach on Schumacher alone. Are the standings from this years WDC an order of driving ability? Clearly not. I could name a number of drivers that wouldn’t be champ if it wasn’t for their butt being planted in the right car.

That, and the fact that Schumacher already had a very impressive record before Ferrari’s ultra-dominant period. You also have to wonder if the Ferraris of ’00-’04 would have been as dominant had they not been developed with the guidance of Schumacher. He’s certainly not my favorite driver in the history of the sport, but the fact remains, Schumacher’s a seven time champion and the most successful driver in the history of the sport (by a whole range of statistics). Moss has a total of zero championships to his name. Sour grapes.

If Sir Stirling Moss canâ€™t make a comment on Schumacher because Moss never won the WDC, then by this logic people who have never even raced an F1 car, like the vast majority of F1 fans, canâ€™t criticise any F1 driver.

Moss was probably asked his opinion on Schumacher and he said what he thought, a view which a few seem to share.

I have often seen fans slate the current crop of drivers for always towing the team line and not saying what they really think, yet if they ever do it would be seen as controversial and make headlines such as this.

Even though Moss never won the WDC he is still rated as one of the best drivers in the history of the sport, he has seen most of the F1 greats in action and raced against some of them.

We all have our own opinions, and if everyone agreed debates on sites like this wouldnâ€™t be anywhere near as interesting, but Moss is a lot more qualified to comment on F1 than most of us.

Happy for Stirling Moss or anyone else to comment on people’s driving abilities. If everyone else had the same view as me i’d be terribly bored.

What i have an issue with is that because it’s “Stirling Moss” he somehow knows better than everyone else and seems to believe the hype around him being this amazing racing driver. I don’t buy that and i don’t buy him belittling other people’s achievements because he’s got a chip on his shoulder.

To draw comparisons to situations outside F1: He’s like the guy at work that never quite made it the top of his profession. Seen people like this in my profession – classic chip on the shoulder stuff.

Actually I htink he has done that ever since. In 1994 it started with saying that Senna would have beaten him and goes on until this day. He must have some personal problem with Schumacher.

Also in my memory, Schumacher didn’t always have the best car by a mile. Also in the pre-2000s he won quite a lot of races with Ferraris that ware on occasions just ridiculous (parts falling out of the back of them). And in 2006 he almost won the championship, hadn’t it been for a broken engine in Japan (he must have thought ‘seriously, now you are breaking?! in those years when i dominated you kept running but NOW you break down on me?!’)

I don’t really know why I’m defending him like that, neither am I a big fan, nor does a 7 time champion need anyone to defend him.

It must also be remembered that like almost any press interview only selected elements of what Moss said will have been printed and they might be slightly out of context.

I can understand though where Moss is coming from, Schumacher certainly is or was a great driver, but is he really as good as the statistics appear to make him? What always bothered me, even at the height of his success was the number of simple mistakes that he made. He was so dominant that most of those had little effect (apart from when he broke his legs). But when you look at the other truly greats, Clark, Stewart, Senna, Prost, they just didnâ€™t make that type of simple mistake…. it bothered me then, and it bothers me now. He certainly didnâ€™t always have the best car, people thought him mad when he went to Ferrari, and his car development skills are legendary which the current testing ban doesnâ€™t help. But why if he is so great does he keep making silly mistakes. I donâ€™t know the answer.

Yes, 7 titles, 91 wins, a gazillion points and race leading miles, all that is somewhat overblown .. i guess nobody could live up to numbers like that.

Sadly I forgot the tons and tons of simple mistakes that you mentioned, would you care to enlighten me please? It shouldn’t be hard to name something like .. 25 of them in the 20 years of racing career he had so far. Thanks a lot in advance :-)

What I still remember very well is how I stood in Belgium, looked at the Pouhon corner and for the first time in the session this red car came and he immediately drove through it absolutely on the edge and repeated that exercise 7 more times, flawless, beautiful, like none of the other drivers did. To quote Brundle (who said it in a different context) “he was so fast through that corner, i thought he was on fast forward’ :-D

The mostly came when he was under no pressure and he just went off, frequently he just recovered and carried on. The most obvious and clear is when he broke his legs, no pressure, nothing wrong with the car and he just drove it off the road. No, the other greats just didn’t do that, yes they went off the road at times but never simple no pressure errors.

@David A
The issue isn’t that the brake failed. The issue is that the race had already been red flaged, he had already passed a couple of flag marshals posts and he was still driving at that speed, why?

No not at all. We are talking about degree of brilliance here. Schumacher is without question in the top 6 drivers of all time. But statistically he is No1 in all the main statistics. The only meaningful one that he is not, is win to start ratio where he is 4th.

The question is, is he the greatest driver of all time as the stats suggest? and for me and seemingly for Moss it’s difficult to call him that when he can dive so brilliantly most of the time and then make some very simple errors.

and for me and seemingly for Moss itâ€™s difficult to call him that when he can drive so brilliantly most of the time and then make some very simple errors.

As I said, every driver, even the other greats have had a similar share of bad races, where they made simple errors or did not drive to their potential. These count against the others as much as they do against Schu.

I happen to agree with Moss to a point. Schumacher is a very good driver and that is not in question, however I don’t think he is as good as the 7 WCs suggest. Remember that he won some of them by ramming other drivers off the circuit etc. I think the current crop of drivers in Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso, etc are much better drivers than Schumacher has ever been and this is shown also by how he was beaten hands down by Rosberg. Unfortunately for schumacher, the old days of getting away with dangerous moves are gone as he found out to his cost with the move on Rubens.

@ Sir Stirling Moss
I know Sir Stirling Moss is a respectable man but I don’t think so this words will earn respect for him. I do agree that many think that Senna is the best driver of all time. But that by no mean Schumacher is a bad driver the way he is describing.He came back to F1 because he is hungry & wants more wins,that a different story that how good his car is & for sure he will take some time to adapt as he haven’t been racing for 3 years.
To everyone who thinks Schumi made a mistake by coming back to F1, JUST GIVE
HIM A GOOD CAR then watch & talk.

@ Webber
Why did he revealed it now? He just should have kept things to himself as he didn’t tell that to anyone when it happened during the F1 season.

It’s amaizing how almost all those games are rubbish. But not the gameplay (that’s easy to get wrong). The graphics are so bad! everything is so out of proportion it almost hurts!

Motorsports fan really have it difficult there. You have to get a proper racing game, download million of mods, have a very powerful computer and ALSO a good steering wheel and pedals… and still, most of the stuff made for us it’s rubbish.

So it’s obvious now that webber loves bikes more than F1 because it’s obvious that this shoulder injury affected him during the last 4 races. Couldn’t he wait a few more weeks to get onto that bloody bike? very dissapointed marky, very!

I’m not blaming the journalists, I’m responding to the people who are saying that Webber is whinging and blaming everything else for not winning the championship.

He hasn’t made a big deal of it, and I’d hardly call it whinging. The only reason its been made wide knowledge is because the journalists picked it up form his book. He never went out and told journalists and made a fuss of it.

He’s hardly “whinging” about it or being a “bad looser” and certainly not making a big deal about it. I think its hugely unfair of people who are criticising Webber about this story.

*And I’m not sure what a “bad looser” is anyway, what, he struggles to get jar lids off?

one line is hardly making a big deal of it. The book is a recollection of his season, of course he’s going to write what happened. If he broke his shoulder he broke his shoulder. There’s probably a lot of other minor details in the book too, thats what this is, a minor mention. But he’s not going on and on, he hasn’t made a big deal of it, he’s not blaming losing the championship on it. He wrote a single line about it.

A single mention is not making a big deal out of something. Its not whinging. Its not coming up with excuses. Its nothing that some of these people criticising him are saying it is.

He didn’t tell the newspapers. He wrote a bit about it in his book and even said that it had nothing to do with him losing the championship. The media picked up on it though and that’s the reason why it’s out there now.

Webber was in a title fight, proberly the last time he will be in one. As if he would tell everyone about his broken shoulder, no but he didn’t complain about it and he just got on with things. Might explain why he lost a bit of form in the final races, not sure though.

That is vintage Webber, isn’t it? He has an accident (and he is involved in many per season)? The other guy is always to blame. His team mate beats him? The team doesn’t love him or he was injured with a broken shoulder, no less. Try to drive a F1 (or a go-kart if you will) for 90 min with a broken shoulder an tell me if it is doable….. Always a reason not to look reality in the eye. It is just unbelievable how lame this fellow is.

If it was an excuse do you not think he would have brought it out earlier to whinge about it.

In my opinion saying that Webber is a bad loser because he put an incident that occured in the 2010 F1 season in his book about the 2010 F1 season is like saying massa is a bad loser because he put the “Fernando is faster than you” incident in a book about the 2010 F1 season. Get over it already, it was a single line in his book, he didn’t bring it out to the public’s attention the media did

The person who made this story public was Mark Webber. He’d successfully kept it quiet this long, he could have gone on doing so, but he chose to write about it. It’s not as if someone broke into his local surgery and stole his doctor’s notes.

no….unless you paid for and read the book then you would found out.
I have not so media have HIGHLIGHTED and reported the context of a book.

Also the book would have had to been written and edited on the fly till end of season…
Not retrospectively…so he would have dictated the accident at the time and not after season…
Other wise it would still be in editing and printing stage LOL

More copies will be sold now that is for sure. I was not going to buy it but am now requesting it for Christmas thanks to this story.

Good marketing by Webber. Definitely not a sore loser though. A fairly content loser I have thought. Have seen many interviews since Abu Dhabi and he reflects very positively on the season.

Can see both sides of the argument but am with Ben and co on this one. Particularly lame response from Antifia implying that he was making it up. If this was so the FIA doctor who alledgedly knew about it and administered injections would be saying that he didnâ€™t know anything about it.

I just wish there was more overtaking possible. For the world champ to not have overtaken more than 1 or 2 cars seems like things are distorted now. Formula 1 is very distorted when cars can’t overtake. Moss is right partly schumi had the best car, mansell had the best car when he won world champ, senna/ Prost had the best car etc etc…
I think the excitement comes when we see drivers excel under difficult conditions. Eg. Senna in the rain in a toleman at Monaco 84(?) in Spa and v mansell in the closest race ever. Even recently. Alonso coming from the rear at Monaco, (and the schumi pass.) Kobayshi’s daring / sometime stupid moves… History us full of drivers overcoming odds and that’s what we want to see more of. Not leafing from the front.

Hamilton and webber have probably done the most overtaking. Rosberg has done some impressive OT’s as well late in the year. (not based on stats just from memory of the year) If webber or Hamilton won at least people would recognize their talent for overtaking this year an overcoming the odds( Hamilton not in the best car and webber with his continual injuries)

Schumacher didn’t have the hardest of teammate’s but he did have to fight against cars that were sometimes better than his own, Alonso and Hakkinen. Rubens wasn’t a slouch either just ask last year’s world champion.

I don’t think Schumacher had to face the length and depth of racing talent that is on the grid today but I don’t think it takes away from his titles it just means he won it in a different way.

He built teams around him, he moulded everything around him and would test endlessly. He would completely dominate Rubens which as I said earlier JB struggled to do. I don’t think it means he’s any less talented or that hisn titles or worth less just that maybe he used every bit of performance available which is a credit to him. Plus, he did it at two different teams and when previously, Ferrari were nowhere. So I have to respectfully disagree with Sir Stirling. Schumacher is flawed but the number of titles aren’t misleading.

But wouldn’t Prost, Pique, Senna and Mansell have a lot more titles if they had team mates who’s job was to support them? Prost would have a 7-title haul easily if Lauda and Senna had played second fiddle.

“But wouldnâ€™t Prost, Pique, Senna and Mansell have a lot more titles if they had team mates whoâ€™s job was to support them? ”

Arguably but that’s the point I was trying to make. Schumacher didn’t just race he moulded the team around him and dominated his team mates. He went about winning in a different way I feel but that doesn’t take away the worth of his 7 titles.

I’d also like to point out that whilst he did win championships against drivers in quicker cars, there were only a couple. One of them was against Hill (who really was a mediocre driver in a fast car) and the mclarens were so unreliable that they barely finished a race!

I’ve always wondered about this theory and I come to believe it less and less.

The 1994 Williams had lost all of the electronic gizmos that made it the dominant car of 1992 and 1993. Senna famously complained about the car’s driveability. And if you believe some, Benetton employed all sorts of illegal stuff to win. I can’t remember where I read it, but somewhere it was said that the Benetton was hard to drive, but if you could it would get you places.

Schumacher won the title in a controversial incident, but also suffered penalties throughout the year that compare only with Hamilton’s 2008 season for drama. Without them, Hill would have been nowhere near Schumacher. Of course, if you believe the Benetton was illegal, then all those points lost to race bans and dodgy decisions (if you thought Valencia was a farce, Silverstone 1994 really takes the biscuit) simply levelled the playing field and the points margin was what it “should” have been.

Let’s not forget by the time of Senna’s death he had scored no points that year, thanks in part to spinning himself out of his home race in one of the most rookie mistakes I’ve seen footage of Senna making. No “mediocre” driver could have ever won the 1994 Japanese Grand Prix and he didn’t even benefit from cars in front of him crashing or blowing up. Never underestimate the pressure on Hill to be team leader after such a traumatic shock to the team either. Remember the 1997 Hungarian Grand Prix? If you would ask anyone who didn’t know of it to imagine a situation in which such a poor car could almost win, they’d say you’d have to have a Schumacher or Alonso in there to do it, not a Webber or Button level of driver. I’m not saying Hill was as good as that, but no mediocre driver could have done that. He very nearly even got pole for the last race in Jerez too, which would have been very interesting for that year’s championship.

Anyway. Either Schumacher’s car was good and he should have beat Hill by a far more comfortable margin before the penalties, or it was illegally good and the final tally was an accurate reflection of the drivers’ seasons. In 1995 the cars were fairly equal and Benetton may have even had the slightly better package. He nearly won in 1997 in a car so far behind team orders were the only way to plug even half the gap. In 1998 he challenged to the last against the might of a Newey car in the first year of new rules driven by someone as good as Hakkinen. Come to think of it, I don’t think Schumacher has ever won a championship in an inferior car, but he’s certainly challenged in them. His 3 wins in 1996 were also damn impressive.

Horner is “disappointed,” and you can just multiply his sentiments by 1000 get a feel for the kind of German being used by Helmut and Dieter to express his views on this.

I think he had a duty to say something. I’m not doctor but anything you would call a shoulder fracture does not seem like a thing you subject to 4-5 Gs of loading, heavy upper-body exertion, and the risk of a major impact. And so I doubt he got some kind of medical all-clear and kept it to himself.

If he crashed out due to pain or fatigue in the shoulder or because he was brimmed with cortizone, and hit the wall and then another car (couldn’t have happened, right?) that is RBR’s business. It could also be the other drivers’ business.

Webber cleared it with the FIA doctor, so he was obviously safe to drive and as Webber keeps stating, it didn’t affect his driving.
So it’s not an excuse as some are saying.
It’s also ridiculous to say he’s made up the story.